You are my sunshine

It's 11:22pm.  I'm in my darkened bedroom, illuminated only by my laptop screen, struggling to keep a fussy toddler asleep.  Her crib is at the foot of our bed.  It's around this time that Violet usually has an episode of crying that requires some soothing to help her get back to sleep.  I never go to sleep before this time when Regina is working overnight because I know I'll be woken up, and I'm terrible with too many short intervals of sleep.  My success rate thus far in getting her back to sleep in her crib after her first wake-up in nearly 100%.  I know the rest of the night, however, will be punctuated at random times with desperate cries and an eventual need to sleep in our bed.  It's our little routine.  

Since Violet was an infant, I took to singing the chorus of "You Are My Sunshine" over and over until she would fall asleep.  For those of you who somehow don't know the verse, it goes: 

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away  

I mix things up a little at times, add some different styles and arrangements, but for the most part it remains a fairly standard lullaby. I like to think my soothing, melodious voice is the key to my success in getting her sleep, but in all honestly it's probably just the placebo part of my routine, which also involves holding her, giving her milk, and swaying her gently as I pace the room with a white noise machine playing in the background.  

Tonight, however, while singing those lyrics like I have a hundred times before, I suddenly became painfully aware that today was 9/11.  That's not to say I didn't realize what day it was.  Not at all.  It's a day branded into my psyche for life.  And if I did happen to forget, there are enough tributes, posts, montages, TV specials and massive American flags unfurled before every sporting event to remind me. In fact, I had a long, winding post about my own 9/11/01 memory already written that somehow got deleted before I could publish it.  Poof! Vanished into thin air. Rather than try to recapture it, I took at as a sign that my story is best suited for the oral tradition.  

Yet here I am, with a half hour left in the day, unable to escape the undertow.  Every year, I think of my friend Lisa who died on United 175 when it struck the south tower.  But this year, suddenly in the dark, I think of Lisa through Violet's eyes.  I read her father's words with new understanding. I know someday Violet will be a strong, independent, and adventurous young woman traveling the country and exploring the world, but what kind of world will it be?  

I think of my childhood friend and his family who lost a father and a husband that day.  Mr. Fodor was a fireman who worked in New York City.  Since we lived about 50 miles away from the city, I never saw him in action.  I only saw him as my friend's dad.  That was the simplistic view of the world I had back then.  He was larger-than-life, and yet always down to earth.  He was the kind of dad that you didn't mind your friend's meeting.  When I heard he was among the first responders that died answering the call, it was heartbreaking.  But to read his daughter's recollection transports me to a place I have never before been.  

To have a tragedy of such global and generational consequence, an experience literally shared by billions around the world, become so personal to me is something I don't think I could never have experienced before becoming a father.  To read Tom Frost's words about Lisa and Ashley's depiction of her father created two points along a line I had never been on before.  They made me look at myself and the world around me from a point of view that didn't exist until a year ago.

But most of all, the new weight of such a little being has never felt so real as it does tonight, as she now rests on my chest, falling back into the kind of peaceful sleep only an infant can achieve.